A sequel to a test game seems odd and I have no illusions that this is a very basic game. There are no grand features nor ambitions apart from releasing a game in the current state of game guru. That has left its mark, I can assure you.

What is this game?

Redacted 2 uses the same tropes and mechanics as the first game and continues its plot line (for that one person out there that cared about Hired Guns plotline!) It is an amalgamate made out of a city map I am very proud of and 2 levels from earlier incarnations of Acythian that have been cancelled. I did of course do a lot of touching up here so these integrate seamlessly.

Whats it about?

A cybernetic agent is sent to infiltrate a hacktivist gang to retrieve the data compilation necessary for a terrorist sect to arm a weapon of mass destruction.

Redacted 2 Plot
We are all glad to be working with you again, agent.
In times like these we are in dire need of men with particular skillsets such as yours.
Your recent work in the pacific was as outstanding as it was necessary.
However, the Intel you have gathered from that facility has confirmed that we are indeed up against
a better funded, better organized and most of all better hidden organisation than we initially expected.
They have set up a major neurolab right underneath our noses, in old war time bunker structures that still
spread beneath lower income areas of our cities. These are a hub for smuggling and crime and the cult we
are trying to pin down has managed to amass some pretty high tech equipment via these routes. They have
merged with a hacktivist collective of a local gang. You can expect dealing with a few lowlife street thugs
but you'll most likely be facing highly trained mercenaries from Helion Corp.
I am authorized to let you know that the data cluster you are to recover stores the non-binary algorithm
to power a neurophage emission device. A prototype has been built and lost during the late phases of the
third world war. There where rumors about it being completed and operational somewhere on the african continent
but nothing substantial until now. You are probably aware that such a weapon could fry the brainwaves of an entire
nation, potentially killing billions yet letting the infrastructure of the whole country intact. Ripe for conquest.
We can not let this fall into the wrong hands.
Your objective is to retrieve the data cluster. You are authorized to use any means necessary to achieve this goal.
There will only be a very small window of time as you are being inserted into the area while the military police is
cracking down on the street gangs of the area to reclaim the territory. They are neither aware of the lab nor your mission
and it should stay that way. Make sure that you and all traces of the neurolab have vanished once their troops reach your location.
We are counting on you! You are our only chance to get to this cluster without causing a major international conflict.

What is the gameplay like?

The enemies in Redacted² are a bit less lethal as they where in the first installation, simply because I have noticed that a lot of players didn't get all too far into that game. They are however still not balloon animals (well, sometimes they are) and you will need to use caution and a certain awareness of your surroundings to proceed.
If you have played games like Ghost Recon you should feel at home. Stick to cover, don't stay out in the open during firefights and take enemies out as fast as you can to survive. Retread whenever you are wounded, the reconstructive nanites in your bloodstream will heal you after a while.

Features??

- 3 Levels

- somber futuristic aesthetic and atmosphere

-decently lit graphics (for a game guru game)

- checkpoints

- balanced arsenal of weapons, two animated by bugsy

- a faithful reimplementation of the longest loading screen ever from redacted 1.

Defects and Shortcomings READ BEFORE YOU PLAY

Redacted² is in an experimental state has it has more flaws than even the test game. Some are my faults, other GG's. You should know what you are dealing with if you want to try this out:

* Level 3 will sometimes not load entirely and be unplayable as a large amount of architecture can be missing
* The first 2 enemies dont react to you...one might stick in the floor
* Several enemies might stick in the floor (yes, I did the forcesimpleobstacle thing, smartypants )
* I had to redesign level 1 so instead of colorful cyber gang members you fight default enemies which ruins the increasing difficulty a bit
* Levels have fewer enemies than intended
* Second voice actor and cutscenes where cancelled
* Production quality of menue and loadingscreens is not as good as it was in the previous game

Hi wolf , downloaded and run game (only a quick test as i am helping someone online at the same time ).Set the alarm to wake me when it was ready to play and away i went.Enemies are not in the ground with me so i can kill them if i could shoot strait .As i said this was a quick test as i have other things going on right now,but will play again tomorow.

I downloaded and played this game. Seemed to have very few of the problems that most other forumites are having. Giant review incoming:

I extracted Redacted 2 and was literally. too. excited; forgetting the first thing I learned about TGC-engine games. I double clicked the game and was greeted to a near-immediate runtime error. Before deleting the download and complaining to wolf, I recalled my training and ran as administrator.

It opened to the most graphically overwhelming menu I had ever seen. Perhaps the buttons and background looked good separately in PhotoShop, but together they were kind of busy and vomit inducing. No matter, I could care less about the menu. I started the game.

about 15 minutes later after "The World's Longest Loading Screen" had finished, the game finally begun. The first level was undoubtedly the shining star of the game. If you get at least almost through level 1 (to the building you have to infiltrate), you've seen the best that redacted 2 had to offer, which I can understand considering the majority of players of this game who aren't hardened gameguru warriors won't stay entertained past level 1. If this is the case: stop reading here and play the first level until you get bored, it's a freaking awesome gameguru tech demo.

If you're still reading or playing, congrats. Once you get to the target building in level 1, you're greeted to a parkour adventure that is as difficult as it is AWESOME. I fell a total of 8 times trying it the long way, finally getting to the scaffold near the last jump and realizing the scaffold itself was climbable. This was like a soft checkpoint and kept me playing when I was getting annoyed at having to do a 10-precision jump combo repeatedly only to fall through a stupid hole in a Cosmic Prophet pipe that should have had box collision anyways (or an invisible floor on it). You know EXACTLY what I'm talking about wolf.

The long and short: level 1 was the best level by a mile; looks, gameplay, ETC. The final gripe I have is that you have that "warzone" ambience instead of a decent music track like you made for kshatriya wetwork. something musical using the ambiance as its instruments would have been cool. This is the plan for Origins. The scenery was untouchable by anything i've seen around the TGC forums, and the map played at a solid 60+ FPS throught. When i finally got into the building yard, I felt like a badass.

Then Came level 2.

Level 2 was somewhat generic. It kinda felt like a 007 nightfire level. I had to search a series of samey but decent looking rooms full of boxes until I found a PDA (really just a key, but nice job making that more interesting) and unlocked the big door that LOOKS TOO CONCRETE TO BE A DOOR I SWEAR TO GOD. This was a level any GG user could "technically" make, but wolf killed it with a fantastic lighting scheme and perfect decoration that made it continue to pique my interest. This level was similar to old redacted level 1, but only in textures, not really lighting or pacing.

I was surprised to see that this level ran slower than the first amazing open outdoor extravaganza fiasco debacle. It was still entirely playable at highest settings, with reshade on however, so I still consider it a pass. No FPS rates below the 30's, at least not for more than a second. After the door, it was a simple corridor shooter until level 3, but done in a way where I was still excited to see where the game would go next. This level was a quicker ramp of the difficulty than I had expected but I welcomed the challenge.

I smoked a cigarette before level 3 loaded and came back when it was done, so if I missed a cutscene or a really convincing line of dialogue then that's my bad. The rest of them weren't exactly oscar winners though so I didn't figure it would be too important, and it wasn't.

Level 3 was basically level 2, but with a little bit more redacted 1 level 1 sprinkled on. It was in this level I noticed that my FAMAS had no tactical reload??? which weirded me out but I pressed on, and was glad I did, because I got to use another one of my guns (BSP's HK416) which seemed to have both reload anims. For some reason, the HUD had disappeared by this point. I considered it the game realizing I was a talented point-man and enabling hardcore mode

This level had a perfect difficulty. One I would have expected for level 2, it seemed like 2 was harder than 3, so that should be looked at unless it was intentional. It was very corridor shootery, like level 2, but concluded in a cool place and after the 20-ish minutes had passed and I had beaten the game, I felt the sense of satisfaction you feel when beating a non-GG game, which was such a weird thing for me, especially considering the bad presentation. The game plays to the engines strengths but pushes one or two boundaries along the way, nothing too risky to stop it from being good though, so therefore it's downright excellent.

The only real gripes I have are the general lack of polish. with some more huds, and "bug fixes" (many of which are likely beyond your control), this game would be unbelievable. I encountered about 2 or 3 enemies throughtout the game unable to decide which face of the floor mesh they wanted to stand on, as well as one or 2 that despite all hell breaking loose in the room around them simply stood there, but that's really more gameguru's fault than anything else. Were it a more competent software, this game would have been nearly infallible.

OVERALL: 88/100
What it needed to be 100/100:
General bug-fixing/stuff I griped on/stuff beyond your control gameguru should iron out
Separate loading screens: If you're going to put a big block of text in the loading screen, there should be one for each level.

EXTREME NITPICKS:
enemy speed=300??? they seemed to zoom around, making almost no cover safe. Seems to me someone would be just as afraid to charge you as you would them, but they tend to run up and ESL corner shot you from around the pillar you thought safe. Perhaps have a few more static enemies.

The parkour route necessary to get into the building is pretty difficult for a level 1 obstacle. If there was a key to the locked door or other ways to solve that puzzle, then disregard.

Too many guns, not enough ammo for any of them. I didn't even get to use this XIX that the screenshots advertise.

Hi Wolfe I might be a bit thick here but if this is a standalone game,why dose the main gg editor fire up when you start the game up (like I said I might be being a bit thick).will play again later today.

Right, finally got through it all, seems different AI were sunk in the floor at different loads, got to say, it was really well made, even with reshade active I was still hitting between 80 and 100 fps, lighting was just right, AI (once working) was just about right, the level design was really good.

The only things I could complain about are as bugsy said the parkour bit, if you're adding jumping puzzles to a game they need to be short bursts, not great long events that if you fall off make you spend forever getting back to where you were.

As to Bugsy's mention about lots of weapons and not enough ammo, personally I found there was an excessive amount of ammo, at the end I had almost 300 rounds for one of the weapons.

Still playing this (watching football at the moment)great fun to play,stuck on the first jumping part at the moment,i to got some enemies halfe way into the floor inside the first building.playing very smoothly so far.

Part of why I named it [Experiment Release] is because I halfassed the presentation and parts of the game suspected that it might behave very differently on different PC's. For example! I am very pleased to see that the last level loaded correctly for Bugsy and that he was able to play through it all the way! On my end, only half of the final level would load. Lemme know if this happens to you too, dear reader!

@Granada: Thanks for playing and I'm very pleased to see that you like it enough to give it several chances. A little request: Could you maybe make that video you uploaded a clickable link? The thumbnail shows a rather questionable character design and an untextured gun and I dont want players to get that kind of impression from it before they play the game. (You can shorten the parcour sequence by climbing up the scaffolding on the right side of the map, near the enter-able building, if you like.

@Belidos: Thanks for giving it a second chance and playing through it!

Quote: "have you tried using a floor zone under them, and in the editor raising them slightly above floor level so they drop to the floor?"

I have tried raising them, yes but not used any floor zones. The existence of those completely slipped my mind while making this game.

Quote: "I was still hitting between 80 and 100 fps, lighting was just right, AI (once working) was just about right, the level design was really good."

Thank you! Also excellent to hear people are getting good performance with my game. That was a real downer for me with the last release.

Quote: "The only things I could complain about are as bugsy said the parkour bit, if you're adding jumping puzzles to a game they need to be short bursts, not great long events that if you fall off make you spend forever getting back to where you were."

Hmm! Yes! I dont think the length made it frustrating but the unfairness of the last few jumps that have to be made. I realized that when I playtested it myself and fell down twice. Back in 2009 I released a nine level game that most people never got to play because in the first 5 minutes was a very frustrating jumping puzzle. You'd think I'd learn

@Bugsy: Ah! The man who was also the primary audience for most parts in level 1
Thanks for the detailed review!! I really enjoyed reading it, here are some replies:

Quote: "It opened to the most graphically overwhelming menu I had ever seen. Perhaps the buttons and background looked good separately in PhotoShop, but together they were kind of busy and vomit inducing. No matter, I could care less about the menu. I started the game. "

The entire presentation screams let this project be over already and is certainly among the worst I have done so far (excluding the intro video for "GTFO" in 2008 But none of ya have seen that dumpster fire It is also part of the reason why I confine this game mostly to the TGC and GG scene. there will be a download on IndieDB but I wont advertise it any further. If a user wishes to do this, he is of course welcome.

Quote: "won't stay entertained past level 1."

You mean navigating through a 3d level and being able to center the screen at an animated puppet and shoot the gun is not the newest hip thing? Darn it!! I bet I could have made a lot of quarters with this thing in 1996

Quote: " I fell a total of 8 times trying it the long way, finally getting to the scaffold near the last jump and realizing the scaffold itself was climbable. This was like a soft checkpoint and kept me playing when I was getting annoyed at having to do a 10-precision jump combo repeatedly only to fall through a stupid hole in a Cosmic Prophet pipe that should have had box collision anyways (or an invisible floor on it). You know EXACTLY what I'm talking about wolf."

Oh dear! Yes I know I found out about the scaffold myself after failing my own parcour twice as well. Well, you can't say that my games are too easy! Its still very manageable I find. The reason for this is that I can run the game at around 50 fps on my system...but in test game it was more like 20ish so I did the whole parcour in slow motion and figured (hey, its almost too easy.)
I do however think that it was an interesting way to add meat to the level and to make backtracking fun.

Quote: "I was surprised to see that this level ran slower than the first amazing open outdoor extravaganza fiasco debacle. It was still entirely playable at highest settings, with reshade on however, so I still consider it a pass. No FPS rates below the 30's"

So was I. My main theories are A) The architecture has more polygons than it looks B ), all the pipes and fuseboxes lag due to the collision C) the culling does not work and it renders whatever is behind the architecture D) Random GG shenanigans or F) Its a very old map and this might have something to do with it. I also dislike the level personally with a few exceptions why I kept it in.

Quote: "The rest of them weren't exactly oscar winners though so I didn't figure it would be too important, and it wasn't."

I cringed at some of my own recordings and shortened a lot of it They also have a bit of the let this project be over undertones. Plus the voice change I made to make me sound like I use a voice modulator was more annoying than anything else. Most enemie shouts are also several years old and dont hold up at all.

Quote: "It was in this level I noticed that my FAMAS had no tactical reload???"

Yes! Since the MP9/10 guns dont have it either. The fact that the HK416 had it for you is a mistake. There is at least some consistency in this game beyond the visuals

Quote: "LOOKS TOO CONCRETE TO BE A DOOR I SWEAR TO GOD."

The whole PDA thing was kinda "phoned in" to ease the pacing before the combat ramps up again. And to have the player see that level I made in 2015 xD

Quote: "One I would have expected for level 2, it seemed like 2 was harder than 3, so that should be looked at unless it was intentional."

I must admit I was surprised by this! Level 2 has sever enemies with more health and they are spread out in a larger, more confusing map where they strike from behind server-rigs and so forth. they also had deadlier weapons in higher frequency. I died several times in this level and only once in level 2.
I suppose it depends on a players style, yours being so very different from mine. The primary reason why I find level 2 easier is because you can always anticipate where the enemies are at! I will take your feedback into consideration for the more serious projects of the cold season and have you beta test my stuff, if you wanna.

Quote: " because I got to use another one of my guns (BSP's HK416) which seemed to have both reload anims. For some reason, the HUD had disappeared by this point. I considered it the game realizing I was a talented point-man and enabling hardcore mode"

Dude! As long as its just the HUD! On my rig, half of level 3 disappears! I meant of course to say that, yes, the game has a very intricate adaptive difficulty!

Quote: " I felt the sense of satisfaction you feel when beating a non-GG game"

Thats even cooler!! I almost feared that the game might be a bit too somber and depressing in tone.

Quote: "The only real gripes I have are the general lack of polish. "

I agree!! Especially the interface and menue/loading screens could have been a lot less abysmal. But I realized that this is not going to get too far in the gaming world. Not with the anemic interactive elements and the AI stuck in the ground. My spidy sense also told me that its going to perform very different on various systems and I was right. And in the end, I just wanted this project to be done. ^^ I know that you know the feeling.

Quote: "
Too many guns, not enough ammo for any of them. I didn't even get to use this XIX that the screenshots advertise. "

I think this is more due to your breakneck speed approach to shooter games. I have dropped plenty of guns in the levels. Especially level 3 had tons of SMGs just lying around on ammo crates.

The XIX is hidden in level 1 on a large neon light during the parcour segment and on the roof of the building you can enter.
It is plain to get in level 3, its on the first story, if you go up the ramp where there is the computer terminal and the ancient roman painting.

Quote: "@Granada: Thanks for playing and I'm very pleased to see that you like it enough to give it several chances. A little request: Could you maybe make that video you uploaded a clickable link? The thumbnail shows a rather questionable character design and an untextured gun and I dont want players to get that kind of impression from it before they play the game. (You can shorten the parcour sequence by climbing up the scaffolding on the right side of the map, near the enter-able building, if you like.
"

with how many guns I have sent you i think it is high time model packs 9 and 10 are retired in our projects. I like animating guns dude!!!!!! SEND THEM!!!! IAINTGOTNOJOB!!!!!!!

Quote: "Most enemie shouts are also several years old and dont hold up at all."

those were good tbh

Quote: "The whole PDA thing was kinda "phoned in" to ease the pacing before the combat ramps up again. And to have the player see that level I made in 2015 xD"

i would have complained had that been a key. BRB stealing that idea for later
however what does that have to do with how concrete that door looks, at least turn up the specularity to like 300 or something sheesh

in my opinion this is the best game i have played produced with gameguru so far. it stayed fun the whole time, and while it lasted a while, it definitely did not overstay its welcome. I'll probably give it a replay in a few months or a few weeks depending on how much i really did enjoy it. I really hope my 5 level game will work AT ALL, considering this 3 level one is having so much trouble working for even its very creator. It would sadden me could you not play my game, wolf.

Graphics: - Superb lighting creates a believable atmosphere, sometimes too dark so the scene isn't visible.
Audio: - Definitely something that stood out, the audio really captivated me and made me feel like I was in the scenes at times. There was a nice touch with the radio voice overs too. The miscellaneous environment sounds made this all possible.
Gameplay: - This is not Wolf's fault. AI often just stood still, sometimes they would appear halfway through the floor. 2 enemy AIs even just had their head popping out of the groud. It was simple enough to slowly walk through the level and headshot each soldier 1 by 1.

My experience overall:

1. Starts up the game.... ERROR...
2. Run as administrator.... loads.... Good old FPSC / GameGuru
3. Get's to menu. Eyes can't handle the UI. Am I stuck in the matrix while on a narcotic substance or am I playing a Wolf game.
4. Click Start Game.
5. Loading...
6. Loading...
7. Flies to Hawaii for 3 week holiday, enjoys cocktails on the pristine beaches.
8. Flies back to tip of Africa.
9. Loading...
10. Finally arrives in beautiful Wolf game. Falls in love with game instantly.
11. AI spawn under ground with just the head peaking out. Guaranteed headshot. 10/10 amazing AI.
12. Jumps around some air conditioners and tin roofs.
13. Falls to ground, breaks ankle.
14. Presses 'Escape' key, clicks 'Save'.
15. Exits, leaves for work. Can't wait to return.

EDIT: continued the game, the AI continued to be potato. Often when they appeared half way through the floor and I killed them, they'd start head banging. It was quite funny.

@Landman: Haha! Yes, I noted that when I absolutely want to get a title out the door, I'll wait a day and make the title screens with fresh enthusiasm. they can have different colours depending on your resolution though.

@Duchenkuke:

Quote: "And once again around the corner comes wolf and shows everyone what gameguru is capable of."

Thank you! I'm sure its capable of much more but the herd of developers pushing it is very thin.

Quote: "If all gameguru games on steam would be even half that good ( from design and gameplay ), gameguru would have a much difference perception and reputation.

Kudos to you wolf, amazing work. ( I ignore the bugs here ) "

Steam, once prestigious has become a big septic tank of terrible (there are great titles on there as well but the quality bar of "admittance" is too low) indie games. I think it did a lot to make both the indie and modding scene a worse place than before the inception of greenlight. Not just for FPSC or GG games but all indie projects and forums. But a lot of things have also improved through time, lets not paint a bleak picture.

@Peri: Thanks for playing, I'm glad ya liked it! I dont know why a different amount of AI is stuck in the floor for different people and why the game doesnt load level 3 for some =/ I hope all this will get straighten out as GG progresses.

Quote: "graphics 5/5 great light work and lot of color that give a feel to the game"

Downloading now will rate this tomorrow after I've played it, its pretty much a no brainer for me as i always enjoy your games apart from them being too short lol Keep em coming Wolf and make em Bigger! longer!! more hours for the missis to greif me!!!

Graphically Amazing, sounds and artwork also amazing was disapointed with the AI but as i know myself the AI with GG atm is buggy second level seemed to have some game killing bugs the first one was no ammo, health or any other messeges displayed. The datapad if you pick it up before you get the terminal messege doesnt work :/
What i dont get is your first one everything seemed to work for me fine and now later on it doesnt hopefully this will be rectified for us in the near future if it wasnt for these crappy AI bugs this would be a real showcase for GG as the environmental sounds, the ideas and the beautiful maps (totally jealous of these ) are honestly breathtaking.
would easy get a 10/10 from me m8 apart from the bugs with the ai etc and your games are too short !!!!! lol

Would i consider reworking the AI? Yes definately something as well done as this deserves it!

Quote: "Would i consider reworking the AI? Yes definately something as well done as this deserves it!"

I can not rewrite the AI. My LUA abilities are nowhere near that level.

Other than that I agree with all the flaws that you listed. As I still have them unchanged, I might rebuild this and redacted1 once the update comes out to see if some of these bugs don't replicate. At least the performance of redacted 1 should then be improved

TBH m8 I've been getting alot better results in the beta (still a few AI issues) but im kinda getting my head around them and ways to rectify them apart from 1 which has me stumped going to be away for a few days but when im back I'll fire yours up again and have a look at your scripts see if i can rectify them i seem to be alot better at picking up errors than writing them from scratch

This is only meant as a technical critique, but from what little I could see, it seemed to look nice, but I just couldn't get the game to function beyond the beginning. It's difficult to say if this was my PC or something in the game.

I encountered a severe video lag problem that kept locking up my PC for between half a minute or even up to 1 or 2 minutes... I turned the video in the game to it's lowest setting and I still had a lot of difficulty with it.

The audio of the voices in the game was also very difficult to understand...

The mouse sensitivity seemed way to high, and made the game play very jittery. This made it so difficult to control, that I couldn't get my character to walk around in the game. This made it so difficult to play the game that, for me, it was unplayable. I couldn't find any slider to adjust the mouse sensitivity, so I couldn't find a way to fix this problem. Thus I couldn't play the game at all.

@Len the Man: Thanks for the review. Yet another installation that behaves as it has not before.

Quote: "I encountered a severe video lag problem that kept locking up my PC for between half a minute or even up to 1 or 2 minutes... I turned the video in the game to it's lowest setting and I still had a lot of difficulty with it."

According to your specs, the game should run as intended. This is odd but might be due to numerous reasons. May I ask if you tried other GG games and how they behaved on your computer??

Quote: "The mouse sensitivity seemed way to high, and made the game play very jittery. This made it so difficult to control, that I couldn't get my character to walk around in the game. This made it so difficult to play the game that, for me, it was unplayable."

There is no way for us to have custom menus in game but I remember that there used to be a mouse sensitivity setting in the setup.ini. Its no longer there now so I might be mistaken. The mouse look is using GG's default settings, are those working for you in GG itself or have you changed them there? I want to know if this is preference or if the game behaves differently on your installation

Thanks for trying and your feedback Len the Man.

@Lotgd:

Quote: "@Wolf Good job! As always, make some masterpieces!
Can I distribute your game on one of my websites, which deals with free games?"

See that little triangle wedge of wood over there holding the door open while people leave? That's Wolf that is, he'll be holding the door open until the last person leaves, then he will calmly light a cigarette, turn out the lights and lock himself in

@Payam: Hey! I've recently checked on "self portrait". I didn't see that many news, are you still working on it?

Quote: "Finished the game twice and the overall experience was good.
With ReShade the frame rate is about 90.
"

Thank you!! Glad some people are playing this on the highest settings too D:

I had no idea the level could be speedrun. I have to link this to bugsy, he's really into it!

Quote: "I expected a mini boss at least."

In level 4 you would start at the end of level 3 and fight through it again backwards, this time against tougher enemies: the military police. I have cut this later and it was for the better as level 3 barely loaded for a lot of players already So! I agree

@Belidos: I doubt I'd be the last one to leave. If the old TGC forum is any indication, then that this place is for life. Its kind of like an outskirts maximum security prison that way.